From: Business To: BusinessSubject: Long-heralded as the next big set of Internet opportunities, business-to-business e-commerce is here--and the crystal balls were right; it's big.

It was in late 1998 that Walt Geer, a partner in an Atlantapromotional-products company, faced up to reality. His littlebusiness--which sold logo merchandise such as pens and coffee mugs(a.k.a. "trash and trinkets") to companies for handoutsto employees and customers-was chugging along OK, but it was justone of about 19,000 promotional-products companies in the country.Plainly put, the 32-year-old's company was lost in that mob. Sohe decided to take the plunge: He cut the cord on his traditionalcompany, dumped his existing customers and--whoosh!--put hisbusiness on the Web aseCompanystore.com.

How did it work out? Well, there were a couple months whenthings looked grim: "We had no revenues coming in,"recalls Geer, "but we had to focus our energies on theInternet, because we didn't have the resources to do it and runour traditional business. Of course, there were scarymoments." But business eventually turned around for Geer."In just a few months, the Internet let us move from being asmall company to a national player," he says. "Before, weserviced lots of little accounts. Now we have AutoNation, thecountry's biggest car dealership, and we're going aftermore big accounts. The Internet is what let us do that."